No Objections To New Perry Mason

February 10, 1989|By Jay Bobbin, Tribune TV Log

A highly rated 1985 TV-movie was entitled Perry Mason Returns; and since then, he's returned and returned and returned.

Novelist Erle Stanley Gardner's famed defense attorney has had a video rebirth in a number of new cases that have aired on NBC over the last three years, and the 10th arrives Sunday: The Case of the Lethal Lesson, in which Raymond Burr again reprises the role that won him two Emmy Awards during Mason's original weekly run. The lawyer's new client is a student (played by William R. Moses) accused of killing a fellow pupil at a law school where Mason happens to be lecturing. Making matters tougher, the father (Brian Keith) of the murder victim is an old friend of Mason, and the defendant's former fiancee (Alexandra Paul) keeps interfering with the probe into the death.

Though Barbara Hale also is back as Mason's ever-loyal assistant Della Street, investigator Paul Drake Jr. is missing, since Hale's son William Katt was unavailable to play the part this time. However, the characters played by Paul and Moses in Lethal Lesson serve as surrogates for Drake, and they are slated to reappear in future Mason outings. ''I'm very enthusiastic about that,'' said Burr, ''because they're great additions. We sadly miss Katt, but he's going on to bigger and better things, as I'm sure these two young people will. I like this idea, because it gives us an investigator the Moses part who eventually will also be able to serve as a lawyer, and I'll bet he'll marry the Paul character. They were going to do that in the second of the three new shows we're filming, but I think they're waiting until the third now, to make it a bigger event.''

Adding two brand-new characters to the established Mason legend isn't a case of blasphemously tampering with writer Gardner's old family recipe, at least in Burr's view, since the actor cites other recent changes of which he has approved.

''I like it that Mason had gone on to be a judge, and that he's also a teacher. That now lets us weave in other things, which we might have done in the old years of Mason if we'd had two-hour shows back then.'' Burr has extra confidence in any new steps taken with Mason, since he had the blessing of the character's creator from the very start.

''Mr. Gardner and I agreed completely on how I should do the role,'' he recalled, ''and how to keep it going, and anything I've added would have happened to Mason anyway in real life. We did the original show for nine years, and he was hopefully older and wiser by the time that period ended. Now, I hope he's 30 years wiser, since he has that much more experience.''